Our dear friends Kevin & Tanya paid us a visit this Holiday Season and experiencing the magic of Christmas and New Year together has reconnected us all with our inner-child.
Our dear friends Kevin and Tanya graced Rich and I with the pleasure of their company these past two weeks.
They know how to live like no other couple we have ever met, and since our bonding on the Golden Princess in back 2006, we have been blessed to see them again and again. This year, they joined us for the Yuletide, compelling us to rediscover how magical New York City can be for four overgrown kids.
We drove into Manhattan from our home (and my office) in Oceanside on the Sunday before Christmas, and hurtled headlong into the 5th Avenue crowds. Now no sane New Yorker would venture here, nor be penned up in Times Square for a day, but sanity is not a claimed trait for any of us!
The windows of Saks and Bloomies, Macys and Tiffanys are decked in a fanciful wonderland of animation, sound and color, and as we walk by and stop to take each one in, as if by staring long enough we might capture one of these glorious ice nymphs to bring home and place under the tree.
The cacophony of children and carolers and revelers and shoppers builds an excitement within us that we remark feels...well...just like Christmas did when we were children!
The smells of roast chestnuts and hot pretzels (and the ubiquitous dirty-water dog, a true delicacy!) delights the appetite and stirs memories of visiting Central Park's Wollman Rink for a day of ice skating and cocoa!
The highlights of our regression into infancy come with my first ever viewing of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular (and truly, it is nothing short of this!) and a walk to the tree to watch the music and light show by night under clear skies and a glorious half-moon makes me feel like it is the very first Christmas all over again!
The Rockettes finale reminds us all that even in this sad age of political correctness and agnosticism, there is still regard for the true meaning of Christmas, as the Rockettes give way to a truly moving real-life Nativity scene, replete with live camels, mules and sheep, and closing with a haunting reading from Luke's Christmas passage "for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. "
We wish all of our friends and family the joys of this Season. If you would like to experience this magical time, contact us now - it is never too early to reserve this season in New York, so you, too, can rediscover your inner child!